EAT BEAT

Happy Hour of the Week: Lucy’s Table

This stalwart Nob Hill eatery deserves a try—or yet another repeat visit.

Posted by: Anna Sachse on Apr 04, 2011 at 10:00AM 2 Comments

The remains of the Vegetable Risotto & Roasted Beet Salad. It was so good, I forgot to take a picture until I was done.

In a city where the citizens are willing to wait two-plus hours for a chance to dine on the latest charismatic comfort food, the fine-dining folks who’ve been doing a good job year after year tend to get short-shrift from the local media. In a meager effort to remedy these slights, we offer Lucy’s Table.

Perched on a bustling corner of NW 21st, this unassuming grande dame has been feeding Portlanders an eclectic mix of upscale cuisine for nearly 23 years. The dinner menu isn’t cheap (entrées range from $15 to $26), but the lunch menu is a bit of a hidden gem, with artful soups, salads, sandwiches, and a variety of house-made pastas and small entrées, all for $10 or less. The dishes are a swirl of Mediterranean and American favorites (think pork osso bucco sharing menu real estate with vegetarian meatloaf and mashed potatoes), and showcase regional ingredients. The wine menu is a lengthy study but reasonably priced (lots of $20s, $30s, and $40s), and is paired with the requisite creative cocktail list that riffs on old fashioned darlings like the gin fizz or sidecar.

When I popped in for Happy Hour last Friday, I was immediately struck by two things:

The first was the superb service I received from my waiter—he was extremely prompt, knowledgeable about the food, and polite without that cloying fakery that permeates nice restaurants.

The second was that they were playing Mr. Bungle, an awesome disconnect with the largely well-heeled 50-something crowd dining in the tiny cocktail lounge area, all of whom seemed to be enjoying the music just fine.

With only six items, the Happy Hour menu itself is a tad limited, but the prices are right and every single thing is tasty.

The standouts:

1) A generous bowl of Macaroni and Cheese ($4) featuring large noodles cooked al dente and swathed in a rich, creamy, tangy sauce with a subtle splash of white truffle oil, only available during HH.

2) A pile of fall-off-the-bone Pomegranate Glazed Baby Back Ribs ($5), glistening with a zingy and subtly sweet citrusy glaze.

3) A crisp Roasted Beet Salad ($4), in which the crimson veg isn’t over-marinated to the point of being pickled; instead, it sits like a mound of vibrant jewels amidst pears, spinach, and a sprinkle of salty feta.

The Vegetable Risotto ($4; only available at HH) is also a treat—it manages to feel light but have a full, rich, oniony flavor that’s hard to accomplish without meat stock. The house-made Goat Cheese Ravioli ($3) swimming in a brown butter sauce flecked with pancetta is a decadent snack, but a tad doughy for my taste. And the final item—Lucy’s BBQ Burger ($6)—has good flavor, but the thin patty and whole wheat bun may be off-putting to local burger lovers.

The HH drink menu consists of three draft beers ($3), well drinks ($4), and house red, white, ros—, and sparkling ($4). I had a perfectly pleasant glass of Argentinean Malbec that was earthy and full of ripe fruit.

Lucy’s Table may not be new or terribly inventive, but she’s a solid reminder that sometimes restaurants stick around for good reason.

Happy Hours: Mon-Sat, 5-6pm

Address: 704 NW 21st Ave

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Tags: Happy Hour, Northwest Portland Dining, American Cuisine, pasta

Happy Hour of the Week: 23Hoyt

New-ish chef Amber Webster is contributing winners to the truly cheap happy hour at Northwest Portland’s trendy dinner den.

Posted by: Anna Sachse on Feb 09, 2011 at 08:55AM 1 Comments

House-made fettucine with smoked butternut

One, two, three, four, come on, baby, say you love me, five six seven (eight, nine, and ten) times.

That’s how the extensive and user-friendly daily Happy Hour Snacks menu at 23Hoyt (located at 529 NW 23rd) is broken up. It ranges from simple $1 nibbles like fresh potato chips and tangy, subtly-seasoned house pickles, to the towering $10 version of their burger—the ground round deluxe with applewood smoked bacon, emmentaler cheese, an organic fried egg, avocado, lettuce, onion, tomato, pickles, and a secret sauce, served on a soft ciabatta bun. (They also provide respectively less decadent $9 and $8 versions.) Gourmet flatbreads come in $7, $8, and $9 versions, and the rest of the fare is filled out with light bites like battered fried greens beans & spicy aïoli ($3) and actual meals, such as duck confit agnolotti (a stuffed pasta; $7) with celery root cream and tart cherries.

Lavish happy hour offerings at 23Hoyt are nothing new; however, the chef is. A transplant from Orange County, California, Amber Webster joined restaurateur Bruce Carey’s chichi, antler and candle-bedecked gastro-pub in late 2010. Instead of white-washing the entire menu and painting a new scene, she’s slowly adding dabs of color here and there. For example, the happy hour small plates now include a fantastic house-made fettucine in a smoked butternut squash cream ($5)—the pasta has the perfect bite and chew and the sauce is nuanced, rich, and savory, completely side-stepping the cloying sweetness that typically accompanies dishes made with butternut squash.

Other fare on the happy hour menu is satisfying and certainly affordable, but doesn’t always rise to exceptional. I appreciate that the cup of roasted beets ($3), served with a heaping scoop of mild, creamy goat cheese, aren’t overly marinated as they so often are in this city, and the straightforward B.L.T. slider ($4) manages to get a bit of pleasing crispness on the thick-cut bacon; but the deviled eggs ($2) are lackluster at best. I’d like to see what else Webster would do if she simply went with her bad self. She got the job with the recommendation of her mentor and former boss, chef Jason Neroni, who, it so happens, just (amicably) left Saucebox after three short months. Hopefully she’ll stick around a little longer.

Happy Hours: Sun-Thurs, 4-7pm; Fri & Sat, 4-6:30pm

Drinks: $3 beer, $5 house red and white, and $6 specialty cocktails.

Vibe: Mostly the NW Portland crowd, who would never wear nubby fleece. But the happy hour prices (and insanely tasty desserts, like fresh donut holes with salted caramel sauce for $6) would make even a dyed-in-the-wool NE’er like me be willing to search for parking every once in a while.

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Tags: Happy Hour, Northwest Dining, American Cuisine

North Portland’s Old Reliable

Pause let’s you spend time—and fill up—with your sweetie without spending a ton of money.

Posted by: Anna Sachse on Nov 19, 2010 at 08:30AM 0 Comments

There are some restaurants where you go to impress a date (e.g. Le Pigeon), others where you go to dork out on food and hear each other talk (e.g. Park Kitchen), and still others where you go to pop the question (e.g. Paley’s Place). But then there are the restaurants that you go to with your one and only when you’re tired and hungry and you may still be wearing your gym clothes. A perfect example is Pause, the quintessential unassuming neighborhood eatery located at 5101 N Interstate Ave.

The menu is broken down into Soup, Salads, Snacks (think Chicken Drumsticks Confit for $6, Grilled Shrimp Skewers for $6, and a Pickle Plate at $2 per person), Sandwiches, Dinners, Kid Fare, and Sweets. It’s mostly “American” cuisine (which basically means there is a mish-mash of ethnic influences, as well fries and burgers), and most of it is $9 or less, barring a few dinner entrées that ring in at $10 (such as the Dijon-Cider Braised Pork Shanks with Mashed Potatoes and Alsatian Sauerkraut) and one high roller—the $12 Cornmeal Crusted Trout with Couscous Salad and Asparagus with a Lemon White Wine Caper Beurre Blanc.

But the real deal to be had is the Everyday Special —two sliders (one cheddar and one bacon-blue cheese; you can also do the veggie version), thick, firm hand-cut fries, and a Sierra Nevada or soda for $7 flat. The meat sliders are pretty damn juicy for little guys and the black bean veggie variety have great flavor and texture.

This is not the place to go for an earth shattering meal—the $8 Baked Mac & Cheese is a bit watery and needs salt, and the $7 Black Bean, Grilled Corn, Quinoa, and Greens Salad lacks black beans, corn, and quinoa—but it gets the job done in a fast and satisfactory fashion. The mostly-local beers are mostly $3.75 ($4.50 for cask conditioned brews and $2.25 for Pabst, of course), the mostly classic cocktails range from $6-$6.50, and wines go for $4-$6 a glass, with the most expensive bottle coming in at $29.

It’s cheap and easy—which, some may argue, is the best kind of date to be had.

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Tags: Cheap Date, Cheap Eats, North Portland Dining, American Cuisine